Unofficial news and tips about Google

October 29, 2006

The Magic of Browsing the Web Without Mouse

Did you ever want to use your browser without needing a mouse? Most browsers have useful keyboard shortcuts that may help you do basic tasks like opening a new tab or entering a web address. But how do you move from one page to another one without clicking on links.

Firefox has a simple trick: press ' (single quote) and you can search through the links from a page by typing a string in the small box from the bottom of the window. So you could type the first characters from the anchor and when the link you want to open has focus, press enter. But what if the page has only links with this anchor "click here"? And what about buttons and image links?

Hit-a-Hint is an extension for Firefox that wants to solve this problem. The idea is that you press a magic key and, after that, each link from the page has a unique combination. All you have to do is press the keys attached to that link. Fortunately, the extension uses numbers, so in most cases, you'll type only one or two numeric keys.

After you restart your browser, you can use the extension this way: press space (space is the magic key) and then one of the unique numbers next your favorite link, while still pressing space. Then release the space key. To open the page in a new tab, press Ctrl before releasing space key.

If you don't like keeping space key pressed, you can just press h, type the numeric combination, and then press enter.